


The Spirit of the Vampire

by This_is_My_Sock



Category: Dracula (Movies - Hammer)
Genre: Angst, Canon Typical Horror, F/M, Fuck Or Die, Ghosts, Possession, Ritual Sex, plot with a little bit of porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28560648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_is_My_Sock/pseuds/This_is_My_Sock
Summary: After the defeat of Baron Meinster, Van Helsing and Marianne find that there is one more deadly challenge they must overcome.
Relationships: Marianne Danielle/Van Helsing
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10
Collections: Holiday Horror 2020





	The Spirit of the Vampire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts).



> There is some light usage of late 19th century attitudes towards woman and sex that I wasn't sure how to warn for in the tags.
> 
> After looking over your letter and your likes and prompts and seeing that we had similar thoughts and tastes for the canon, I think I ended up writing the story I would have liked someone to write for me. I really hope you like it!

After the death of Baron Meinster, Van Helsing spent several weeks hunting down and disposing of his remaining brides to put and end to the Meinster colony and ensure the safety of the village. Marianne, being so traumatized by the ordeal placed herself wholly in his care, refusing to return to the school where she had witnessed such evil. Once the task for which he had come in the first place was complete, Van Helsing removed them both from the bleak landscape and traveled back to his home in Germany. There he hoped to treat her afflictions of the mind and nurse her back to full health. To his servants he explained that she had been the witness to – and nearly the victim of – a great crime that still caused her much suffering and nightmares and they would need to show understanding and pity as he helped her to recover.

The nightmares had plagued her since the night after the Baron’s demise. They were sharp, violent and frequent; her screams sometimes waking the entire house as well as their nearest neighbors. Often she was inconsolable for full minutes, hovering somewhere between the sleepful and wakened state. Though dead – completely dead and destroyed – it appeared that Baron Meinster still haunted and tormented her psyche, menacing and attacking her while she was at her most vulnerable. With each night of restlessness Marianne diminished further, becoming gaunt and sickly as if she were being drained of all of her youthful vitality; eventually she started to show signs of derangement as her behavior became erratic. It was something he could not account for and it worried him immensely.

It was under these conditions that Van Helsing had taken to sleeping in her room – a large, comfortable armchair placed next to her bed serving as his place of respite – in the hopes of staving off, or at least lessening the duration of, the night terrors. His nearness seemed to help somewhat on those first few nights, and when the terrors began creeping back the immediacy with which he could address them seemed to counteract a portion of their ill effects. One night, after a particularly unpleasant episode, not even his most soothing of ministrations would lull her back to sleep, a fact that agitated her. 

“Doctor,” she looked up at him, her chill hand gripping gently around the warm skin of his forearm, keeping him in place as he attempted to move from the place he had taken up beside her back to his chair. “Please, stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere my dear,” he reassured her. “I will be right here at your bedside as always.”

“No, stay here, beside me. Hold me in your arms so that I may sleep. Please.”

The idea was against all convention and propriety of course, under any other circumstance he would have said it was out of the question and firmly set her down for even having made such a suggestion. In this case, however, with her soft brown eyes desperately searching for hope and safety somewhere among his person… He could not deny her. So, he lay down next to her in his shirt sleeves and trousers; she tucked under the sheets and he atop them. He wrapped her in his arms and she nestled her head into the crook of his shoulder and it was in this manner that they were bless with three full, restful, and consecutive night of sleep. Van Helsing was amazed at the improvement given to her well-being in such a short period of time.

It was on the fourth night that the nightmares returned with even more force and violence than they ever had. Marianne had begun to twist and thrash in the circle of his arms, waking him from his own sleep. He moved to comfort her, as he always did, and was shocked at the image before him. She lay next to him, her eyes wide open, though still glassy with the unseeing veil of slumber, body and limbs moving as if she were fighting some invisible phantom. Then all at once she ceased moving completely.

“Marianne?” He called to her quietly as he shook the shoulder nearest to him lightly, attempting to rouse her. “Marianne, you must...”

His words were cut short as she was wracked by a heaving spasm, raising her into a sitting position in one swift motion. She placed her hands on his chest and shoulders as her torso turned toward him, and he had but a moment to contemplate the malevolent, grinning snarl that warped her beautiful face before she pushed him – bodily and with a power beyond anything that should have been her own – away from her. He flew backward, somersaulting from the bed and landing in a painful heap on the floorboards several feet away. When he gathered himself and reclaimed the wind that had been knocked from him he turned his attention back up toward the bed. For the second time that night he felt a terrible shock at what his eyes beheld.

Marianne was no longer on the bed, instead she floated upright in the air above it, toes skimming the tangle of sheets. Her eyes were like red hot coals, burning with a hellish glow, as they turned on him. Her face was still contorted, a ghoulish mask of feral savagery that sat like blasphemy over such normally lovely features. The voice that issued forth from her lips did not belong to only her. There was another tone that dominated. A tone that was deeper, more masculine, with a different cadence, a different accent, and even though it was mingled and layered with Marianne’s he knew it immediately. It was the voice of the vampire Baron Meinster. 

“She is mine Doctor! You can not save her! You shall not have her! She belongs to me! With her I will damn you both!”

He plunged his hand into the open bag that sat beside his chair, fumbling for the ornate wooden cross that lay within and thrusting it out before him as soon as his fingers wrapped around it’s finely hewn bulk. “BEGONE foul fiend! She is protected! You are not welcome here!”

The voice that was not Marianne’s screeched and wailed from her throat and a chill wind blew past him, snuffing out the fireplace as it moved toward the window. It was by the light of the moon outside that he watched Marianne’s body collapse, crumpling in on itself, back onto the mattress. It was his fear when she did not immediately stir that drove him from his place on the floor to the bed, settling beside her form and pulling her into his lap. He cradled her like a child, brushing locks of auburn hair from her face, seeking the signs of life in her eerily still body. After a panicked moment he noted the shallow rise and fall of her chest and shakily pressed a kiss of relief to her forehead. When he pulled back he realized that her hand gripped tightly at the front of his shirt and she looked up at him with wide, bloodshot eyes brimming with tears. 

“James,” she spoke his Christian name, her voice barely above a whisper, dry and cracked as it if had moved across sandpaper to reach his ears. Gradually it became louder, harsher, more frantic, “his anger will not be sated, my mind burns with it. Oh, the things he shows me when I sleep. His vengeance, his lust, his hatred. I think I shall go mad with it. I feel as if I am untethered, adrift in darkness.”

“I will not allow him to keep you in torment. You are not yet lost to me.”

“What can be done?” She sounded somewhere between resigned and pleading.

“We must break the bond that was formed between you, banish his wicked spirit, break the hold his immortal soul has taken upon yours,” he cupped her flushed, fear dampened face between his hands, “else I fear he will steal away your goodness and your sanity as well as your life.”

“How?”

He pulled her into his chest, a tight embrace that was as much for himself as it was for her. “There is a way, and I will find it.”

It took him a full month to find the answer, an agonizing, hellish month that he was surprised either of them had made it through. If not for the stop gap measures he found during his search they might not have. The solution he found, however, was a distressing one. Not only was were the pagan arts involved – something he had been expecting considering that it was the pagan arts that created the vampires to begin with – but the magic required was coital magic. He had little idea how he was going to tell Marianne, but this ritual was their only hope and tell her he must. So, he screwed up all of his courage, called her down to his study and told her everything.

The conversation was only slightly less awkward than he had imagined. He would not soon forget the look on her face when she finally, fully understood what he was explaining to her – ladies having access to novels was useful for something after all it would seem. She had asked him if it would hurt and he had told her that it might, but only for a moment, assuring her that he would do all in his power to lessen any discomfort for her. Once he had satisfied all her questions, she resolutely declared herself ready to proceed. They were married the following day in a small church ceremony – she had bristled slightly when he’d proposed to her, telling him that she had always hoped to marry for love. He answered that he had hopes that she was, but that this part of the arrangement was nonnegotiable. While he was willing to compromise his principals enough to perform arcane magic to save the life of someone he cared for deeply, he was not willing to compromise her virtue while doing so.

The following day, after Van Helsing made some important arrangements, they made their way to his rural estate. The servants would follow the nest day, leaving them completely alone for the night to do what needed to be done. One of his colleagues of the occult had agreed to set up the ritual space – he did not need to know the full extent of it in order to do so, for which he was thankful – so that it was ready when they arrived in the early evening. It did not require being out of doors, but considering the component requirements, Van Helsing felt that the greenhouse would be the ideal spot. When they arrived, the newly weds retired to separate rooms to change into the required attire. They would both be nude excepting for mostly opaque, gauzy white robes that tied together with a sash at the front. Once changed, they met in the greenhouse.

There was no bed – the ritual had no room for it – there was only the soft mound of fresh earth taken from holy ground, consecrated with holy water and ringed by white candles and an unbroken line of salt. He felt a pang of regret that she would not be allowed to enjoy her first love making against the soft, comfortable confines of a feather mattress. Pushing the unhelpful thoughts away, he took her hand, kissed it, and led her inside the sacred circle. He held her hands, steadying her as she took her place on her back atop the pile of soil and then he joined her, aligning himself with her on his side, all the necessary tools within his reach. As the first pagan words fell from his mouth, the ritual began.

His hand trembled nearly imperceptibly as he undid the sash around her waist and pushed open the robe, the fabric billowing away and pooling at her sides, laying her completely bare before him. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she was, but the spell could not be interrupted for such things, he would have to remember to tell her later. He spoke the required words as his fingers drew the mystical symbols in wet sage ash across her skin, raising goose-flesh along all the most delicate places. The sighs his lingering touches drew from her were almost enough to make him forget what he was doing. It was the sounds from outside the circle – the curses and spitting growls from the spirit of the vampire who had found himself barred from crossing the barrier of salt and light as they did what was necessary to destroy him once and for all – that kept his mind focused. He spoke the last word and drew the last symbol, his eyes finding hers in the warm, flickering light.

“Are you ready?” His eyes scanned her anxious face.

“I…” she swallowed and worried her lip between her teeth, “I think so… maybe.”

He ran the back of his knuckles gently down her cheek and over her lips. She kissed them shyly. “Perhaps I can help make you more certain.”

He lowered his mouth to her own, he pressed forward, she parted her lips and together they partook in their first real, passionate kiss. A kiss that felt as if it had waited eternity for this moment and held more emotion than either of them knew they possessed for the other. Eventually he tore his lips away from hers and trailed them to her neck and then down and down and down her body, careful to avoid the places containing the magical symbols, leaving a trail of heat and desire in his wake. He made discovery of all her most sensitive areas with teeth and tongue; her inner thighs, the top of her hip, her nipples. His efforts were extensive, leaving her practically writhing and himself painfully erect.

“Do you find yourself more prepared now?” he hushed into the shell of her ear.

“Yes, yes… oh, oh yes.” she breathed between puffs of air. 

Releasing his own sash and pushing his robe aside, he settled his body between her legs, took up her gaze with his own, and after a short paused drove inside her waiting warmth. She cried out, pleasure tinged with pain and he stilled, his thumbs smoothing circles at her temples as he waited for her to adjust. After a moment she flexed her hips and then they were moving together, building a steady rhythm of slow, burning passion that would have them both moaning and panting before it was over. Shyness long gone, she clutched him to her breasts and met him thrust for thrust, alternating between begging for his mouth on hers and moaning for more of everything his body was making her feel. It was his given name on her lips, said like a prayer, when she came that dragged him over the edge along with her in his own grunting orgasm. She went somewhat slack beneath him and he rolled off of her, settling in at her side.

His eyes scanned her body. All of the symbols were gone, there was no trace of the sage ash to be found on either of them, and the white candles had all shifted color to a pale blue that almost seem to glow. The ritual was complete.

“He’s gone,” she told him, following his gaze. “I can feel it.”

The poltergeist was exorcised. She was safe. They were free. 

He kissed her again before getting to his feet, securing his robe fully around his person, and offering his hand to help her up as well. She tied her own robe loosely, haphazardly, not caring that he could still clearly see most of her through the gap between the two sides of fabric. Something stirred within him and he lifted her into his arms, now he would carry his wife to their bedroom and make love to her properly for the remainder of the night.


End file.
